This is one of the most common questions that automotive SEO firms here.

Many dealerships try to take care of their search engine optimization alone, and while some can handle it perfectly fine and see their rankings rise, others find that the entire concept is too complicated.

Learning to do your own automotive SEO is like learning a new language.

There are actually plenty of jargon terms to learn and you might often feel like you are learning a new language as you are trying to sift through them.

The truth is that automotive SEO is not complicated.

It is complex. It can be challenging, but it is not complicated.

The reason it often seems so complicated is because what the average person wants is a simple roadmap they can follow to improve their website’s ranking.

They do not necessarily need the most complex or advanced strategies.

They do not want to hear that a strategy is alright to use, as long as you do not try to use it too much.

They want a strategy that is easy to follow, easy to implement, and gets the results they’re looking for without having to worry at all about whether or not they are going to get penalized for doing too much of something.

If you are feeling like automotive SEO is just too difficult, you might need to go back to basics.

Here’s what you really need to know in order to get your website ranked:

Great Content

Content is the basis of every single automotive SEO campaign.

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Campaigns that succeed are the ones that have great content as their foundation.

You need both quantity and quality.

And while many marketers will tell you that you need some minimum word count on each page to get Google to pay attention to you, the truth is that you just need content and it needs to be relevant to your readers and their interests.

Lots of great content is a good idea, but even just one piece of exceptional content can improve your rankings.

This extends from your website, to your blog.

Anywhere that your dealership’s brand is associated with online needs to have compelling content that is as informative and valuable as it is original.

Clean Code

Most people think of SEO as a surface-level strategy.

It only has to do with your content and your keywords.

The truth is, however, that your code can be just as critical to a high ranking as your keyword-rich content is.

If your code is not clean and if it has not done with your search engine optimization in mind, it could actually be working against.

Using your page title, meta descriptions, alt descriptions, headers, anchor text, and all related tags is a good way to make sure that your website’s core code is as prepared to help you rank as the content that is actually visible to those who come to your website.

Work with a website designer who deeply understands this concept and knows how to implement it for your website.

Links to Your Website

One of the most important and least understood aspects of automotive SEO is linking.

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You have probably already read at least one article that talks about how critical backlinks are to getting ranked.

Only having this piece of knowledge and not understanding the core idea behind backlinks and what makes them valuable can be dangerous.

Many people start to invest in low quality links, in link trees, or in other strategies that are actually black hat and could do far more harm to your website than they do good.

Every search engine puts a high degree of emphasis on your backlinks.

Where are they coming from?

How long have they been there?

Is that website relevant to yours?

Do they have good authority?

Backlinks are important because they demonstrate that your website is relevant enough and authoritative enough that someone thought it would be valuable to their readers to link back to your website.

It is a sign that your website is what it claims to be.

The problem becomes that too many people get too focused on getting a high number of backlinks (or even just getting any backlinks at all), and they stop worrying about whether or not those backlinks are actually serving the purpose they should be serving.

This is one of the more complicated tactics.

Doing it correctly will boost your rankings. Doing it incorrectly can get your website removed from search rankings altogether.

Get Help

Many dealership websites will follow the instructions they find all over the internet and will continue to see mediocre traffic and poor rankings.

They might start to give up on SEO altogether.

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Which is fair.

If you try a tactic, do everything you think you’re supposed to do, and still do not see the results you want when you have really given the strategy time to work, it can be very tempting to just give up on it.

It is important to remember, however, that SEO is the foundation of all of your digital marketing strategies.

Without strong automotive SEO, even the customers looking specifically for your dealership might not be able to find you.

If automotive SEO seems too big and too complicated for your dealership to handle, it is time to ask for help, rather than simply abandoning the strategy.

A qualified SEO firm who has experience working with dealerships and helping them achieve the ranks they want and need to be successful can take over part or all of your SEO strategy.